DESPERATE FIGHT ON SLOPES OF MONTE FAITE

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 136, 8 June 1917, Page 5

DESPERATE FIGHT ON SLOPES OF MONTE FAITE

GALLANT COUNTER-ATTACKS OF THE TIBER BRIGADE.

LONDON, June 7. The correspondent of the "Daily Chronicle" on the Carso front describes tho desperate Austrian counter-attack on Mount Faite, two miles to the northward of the recently captured village of Kostanievica, on Sunday. He writes: The Austrians for several days plastered the new Italian positions with shells of all calibres, while the Italians were feverishly striving to dig shelters on the stony slopes. Then the Austrians in the darkness launched two Hungarian battalions of specially-trained storming troops to clear the way for the main attacking forces. An Italian staff officer describes them as tho beet troops the Italians have yet encountered. They were all men in the prime of life. They fought desperately and forced a way into the salient, with the assistance of a tremendous barrage. The Italians, threatened on both flanks, fell back, and the Austrian supports commenced to ascend the slope to the salient. They did not get there. The Italian gunners have learned much during the last few months. Their curtain fire shut in the stormcrs as into a chamber. Then came a dramatic moment. Famous Romans of the Tiber Brigade, with all of Rome's historic traditions inspiring them, swept into the breach. The Hungarian stormcrs fought like trapped beasts, and a desperate, implacable, bayonet and grenade battle raged, while the rival artilleries stormed shell on both sides. Thousands of dead lie in the sun awaiting burial there, part of the terrible harvest of the last sixty hours. An Italian communique states: —Fighting is less intense south of Jamiano, in the southern sector of the Carso Plateau. We withdrew slightly to a new line fronting Flonders, which is a more tactically advantageous position.— (A. and N.Z. Cable.)